Develop your employability skills
Employers look beyond your academic ability – they want to know if you also have general employability skills. Not only will such skills help you enter the job market, they can help you adapt to change over the course of your career, in any industry or profession.
Employability skills include things like:
- communication
- creativity and innovation
- initiative and enterprise
- professionalism
- planning and organisation
- problem identification and solving
- teamwork
- intercultural competence
- use of tools and technology.
If you can identify and demonstrate your employability skills, you can use them to your advantage when planning your career, applying for a job, attending an interview, requesting a new role or job responsibilities and selecting professional development
Reflecting on experiences to demonstrate employability skills
It’s a good idea to build a bank of employability skill examples. You’ll find that this will come in handy when you start job hunting.
First you identify your employability skills. Then you reflect on them in order to demonstrate them as meaningful examples. The most effective way to do this is through the Situation, Task, Action and Result (STAR) method. Recruiters use STAR to determine if candidates have the right skills.
- Situation
- This is the backstory – the who, what, when and where.
- Task
- What it is that you had to do? What were the success criteria? What part did you play in the situation? What did you have to achieve?
- Action
- Paint a picture of the task and showcase your contributions. What did you do? Why did you do it? How did you do it? How do your actions demonstrate this skill? What were you thinking? Was there anything unique about your actions or your method worth mentioning?
- Result
- There is little point explaining the situation if the employer is still left wondering whether you made any difference. What happened as a result of the actions you took? What would you do differently or improve? What did you learn? Can you quantify your result?
For more help with building your employability skills, go to Student Futures.
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